Producer: Piranha
Retail Price: £9.99
Author: Design Design

Readers of 2000AD will recognise the main character in PIRANHA's latest game. Rogue Trooper is the soul survivor of the Quartz massacre. The rest of his regiment was systematically wiped out after being betrayed to the Norts and then left to the mercies of the Sun Legion.

The vid-tapes storing the vital evidence which Rogue Trooper craves will probably have survived the blast due to their protective casing. Eight of these vid-tapes must be collected and put safely in a waiting shuttle for transportation to the spaceport where the atrocity of the massacre can be revealed.

Three of Rogue's friends who died in the Quartz massacre were stored at the moment of their death on micro-chips. These chips are now attached to Rogue's helmet, back-pack and gun, and each of them, Helm, Gunnar and Bagman have different personalities. These GI buddies cajole and advise Rogue as he roams the hideously contaminated Nu Earth.

The Nu Earth has been completely ravaged by the effects of chemical warfare, although because he is a genetic creation, this only affects Rogue slowly. The Norts who are guarding this desolate wasteland have to wear special breathing masks in order to survive, and can be recognised because of this. As Rogue stomps around the Nu Earth he can either avoid the Norts or blast them with his own weapon. Extra ammo can be collected along the way if supplies get low.

The marauding Norts are not the only perils facing Rogue on this ragged planet. Beware the minefields and the automated pillboxes which shoot anything (even Norts if they get in the way), and take quite a bit of blasting to destroy.

Each time Rogue is shot he loses five strength points, and stepping on a mine will severely dent his reserves. This damage is shown by the amount of strength he has left. When this strength level reaches zero he will die and the game will be over. First-aid packages crop up now and again and will replenish some of Rogue's energy.

Rogue's status is shown on a chart at the top of the main screen. This shows how much ammo and first-aid kits he is currently holding and how many of the tapes he has found. Points are scored for any Norts killed and Rogue's strength is indicated as a percentage at the bottom of the chart. To the left is a small map. It shows up areas containing Norts, the location of the shuttle, and the type of ground around. This is important, as while Rogue is in some terrain, he is slowly healed, whilst the rad desert and other areas will slowly drain his strength. To the right are the three chips and a small screen on which their messages and general running commentary are displayed.

The essential vid-tapes are easily recognised and these, like everything else in the game are automatically picked up when Rogue walks into them.

COMMENTS

Control keys: definable
Joystick: Kempston, Protek, Sinclair Interface II
Keyboard play: responsive
Use of colour: monochrome
Graphics: isometric 3D graphics
Sound: spot effects
Skill levels: one
Screens: 72

I found that after only a few goes I was only one tape away from finishing the game. The game is quite addictive at first, but this soon wears off as you realize that it really is a very small play area, as the screen rolls around. All the different types of area contain some well drawn graphics but are all stick drawings, and lack any substance - I also found these areas a bit bare as far as baddies go. I would recommend this to someone who finds games hard to play - but for hardened players Rogue Trooper is much too boring.

The game perhaps isn't as good or as compelling as it could have been. Stomping around a fairly small wraparound playing area searching for things and murdering the odd baddie is a plot that's been used all too often in the games world. There is an overall lack of polish to the game. Graphically and sonically there is nothing in Rogue that will raise any eyebrows but they are adequate. I think this will appeal mainly to 2000AD fans as the game itself is fairly run-of-the-mill.

Rogue Trooper is an excellent game. The perspective is very good, and though the variation of colour starts to hurt the eyes after a while, I could play this game for hours. I only have a small gripe, and that's that it's a little too easy to complete, and the finishing reward screen is fairly boring. The comments by the biochips add atmosphere to it, and the game is fun even if you forget the tapes, and go around blasting Nods and pill boxes.

Piranha
£7.95

The deserter... stranded in the chem-clouds of Nu Earth... carrying the bio-chipped personalities of his three best buddies... sole survivor of the Quartz massacre. Rogue Trooper, the last Genetic Infantryman now fights two wars - a fugitive facing execution from his own side and a vicious guerilla war against any Norts who dare to cross his path.

He wants his bio-chip buddies regened. But most of all he wants to find the Souther traitor who killed them and the rest of his kind. He wants him dead.

At this point the cassette card usually hands everything over to you... Sounds good doesn't it? But then this isn't an ordinary scenario and it isn't an ordinary tie-in game. This is Rogue, hero to millions and much missed star of 2000AD.

Shame that Tharg The Commercial One merely wrote zarjaz all over the packet and didn't bother to have a go. The thrill-suckers have been at work here.

It's by no means a terrible game. Cast in the 3D machine-gun toting hunchbacked hero mould of Cobra, Rambo and so on, it's got lots of gratuitous violence, lots of sneaking up behind walls and do-or-die dashes.

But it isn't brilliant - it's slow and flicks from screen to screen rather than scrolling. What's more Rogue is about three times faster going forwards/backwards than he is going left/right - weird.

And all you've got to do is: 1. shoot lots of Norts, 2. collect ammo to stay in business, 3. collect medi-kits to patch up wounds, 4. collect eight vid-tapes that identify the traitor and 5. make off in what looks awfully like a second-hand Space Shuttle.

If that sounds hard, I got all eight tapes and within a couple of screens of the space shuttle on just my second attempt at the game. Piranha promises all sorts of extras like grenades and Southers but if you can get this far without seeing a single one then I don't think you need bother looking for them.

One thing that is true is that bio-chip mates Bagman, Helm and Gunnar occupy the top of the screen and offer advice and encouragement. After about five minutes play, you're sick of their inane commentary and start to wonder why the hell you're bothering to carry them around...

Since I'm a Rogue fan, I'll say it's a nice bit of fun if you're into it. But it's not a blockbuster and it won't keep anything other than the goldfish occupied for more than a week. But then I'm charitable.

However, Judge Dredd would give it ten. Ten years in the isocubes.

LOOKING FOR AN OLD ANGLE

From Ultimate's classics to the cute and quirky Head Over Heels, we've had our arcade adventures in the strange 3-D of isometric perspective.

But, says WILL BROOKER, some of those first tentative steps in the new dimension work better than today's glossy games.

Way, way back when Hungry Horace was still a national hero, 3D Ant Attack sneaked out under the Quicksilva label. Its Softsolid graphics of the walled desert city Antescher were hailed as astounding, and 3D Ant Attack wedged itself firmly into Spectrum history as the first game with truly three-dimensional views.

The next isometric blockbuster was Vortex's Android 2, released in the spring of 1984. In gameplay it's just a 3-D version of the old arcade game Berserk, but the graphics (which CRASH gave 96%) brought it up to this magazine's Game Of The Month standard.

Programmer Costa Panayi followed this up with the impressive TLL - a fighter-plane simulation with a carefully worked-out dynamic playing area. There's not a lot of game behind it, but the flying is enough.

The Softsolid technique was soon followed by the first 3-D 'adventure movie' - Hewson Consultants' The Legend Of Avalon. Its adventure element is a bit dubious, and the term 'arcade adventure' would be disputed for years after its release, but the game was a great success with its colourful, pseudoisometric graphics.

In 1985 the spate of high-quality isometric games continued: Ultimate's classic Knight Lore was followed by another Vortex game, Highway Encounter, and the next technical advance was Filmation 2. An Ultimate invention, this allows graphics of Knight Lore's quality to be scrolled smoothly over a large playing area. Filmation 2 was used for Ultimate's Nightshade, but was soon knocked into a cocked hat by The Edge's Fairlight.

Even back in the golden year of 1986 there were unimaginative clones which sometimes threatened to swamp all the review pages with their identical, and by then extremely boring, isometric screens. But some games brought a breath of fresh air to the already tired genre: the humorous Sweevo's World from Gargoyle Games, Ocean's surprise hit M.O.V.I.E, and Hewson's Quazatron. A Spectrum version of the Commodore 64 hit Paradroid, Quazatron amazed everyone by being superior to the original.

Not so original but also well-implemented was Ocean's Batman, and Quicksilva's Glider Rider deserves a mention along with Design Design's Rogue Trooper for taking a gamble and nearly succeeding.

Last year Ocean had a megahit with Head Over Heels, M.A.D. had a budget Smash with Amaurote, and Gargoyle brought out the first (and probably last) Hydromation game, Hydrofool - the sequel to Sweevo's World. CRL's 3D Gamemaker utility now enables everyone to rewrite Knight Lore, and last November saw the first real isometric adventure, Incentive's Karyssia.

Of course, whether isometric perspective presents a 'true' 3-D view is arguable - the player in these games is 'positioned'somewhere up in the air, outside the playing area, so any game using the technique looks forced, like a technical drawing. Though its representation of object and rooms may be highly effective, if we're going to nit-pick we can't say isometric perspective gives a realistic view.

But the technique has proved perfectly satisfactory for countless games, and it's pointless to damn them all for lack of realism.

More significantly, it will be interesting to see if the market for isometric graphics ever dries up, and if the public will one day reject the genre as outdated and overused, just as it once refused to accept any more Pacman clones.

ROGUE TROOPER
Piranha
79% Issue 36

This licence is based on the early Rogue Trooper stories from the comic 2000AD. Rogue is, as usual, trudging around Nu Earth, this time looking for the eight vid-tapes which show how the Traitor organised the destruction of the rest of the GIs (you have to know the strip to follow the scenario, really).

Nu Earth, which seems to have shrunk a little in conversion from comic to computer, is patrolled by Norts and Uttered with ammo, med-packs - and, of course, the tapes. And Rogue's biochipped buddies Gunner, Helm and Bagman give onscreen advice which isn't always particularly useful (Gunnar rarely says anything more inspiring than 'Let's grease some more Nort scum').

When all the evidence has been collected Rogue can return to the shuttle and wait for Cam Kennedy to draw him some more identical stories (oops! that just slipped out).

Despite the extremely tacky presentation, this is an enjoyable game. It's not hard to win, which may put some off, but it provides relaxing therapy when you need your confidence boosted a little. The graphics are detailed, varied and recognisable, and though the colour washes are used simply they add interest.

Perhaps Rogue Trooper's strongest point is the atmosphere generated by the graphics and the comments: it is, surprisingly, the most faithful 2000AD conversion yet.

It says something for 2000AD that it has been the source of so many ideas for computer games.

Now Piranha has lifted out Rogue Trooper to Fight on the Spectrum.

Rogue Trooper, a sort of mutant Rambo of the future, battles alone against a relentless foe. His mission - to destroy a traitor who betrayed Rogue's GI buddies. The buddies are not actually dead. Their personalities are stored on microchips and in destroying the traitor Rogue will win their release. As you can see there is going to be a lot of serious killing in this game.

The game look visually very like Commando presented as a 3D scrolling game, big sprites and a true sense of perspective. This is good.

The gameplay is fairly complex - aside from destroying very many things, there are little icons representing the chipped buddies who offer advice ('kill, kill, kill', mostly) and things like stamina levels to be maintained etc. This is also good.

There are eight tapes to be collected - video recordings which together provide the evidence necessary to convict the traitor - and I found four of them on my second attempt at the game. This, I would have thought, is bad.

The game, though maybe not state of the art graphically is certainly in the first division. Big sprites which trot along (it has to be said that Rogue's walk is not very macho - more carefree really) smoothly and quite detailed backgrounds. The restriction to two-colour gives no attribute clash but makes things a little difficult to see on some screens - particularly yellow on white is a bit distracting.

Although clearly a large part of the point of the game is kill and not being killed, the speed at which everything happens is very restricted. Because of the large number of big sprites moving about at the same time it's all a bit slow and this detracts seriously from the challenge of the game. It is comparatively difficult to be caught unawares and your fire button is hardly likely to suffer damage when your bullets stroll nonchalantly across the screen.

The game is large (100+ screens) and there is some variety to the landscapes - mixed areas of desert, barbed wire and burnt-out ruins. The latter are more exciting since there is an opportunity to shoot through holes in the walls (tricky programming stuff that) and use corners as cover. Things almost get exciting.

Whilst shots from assorted enemies are relatively ineffective - you need to be hit a lot of times before it matters much - treading on a mine is instant death. This would be a source of potential tension in the game were it not for the fact that it is quite easy to avoid them. The only time I died from a mine was when moving from one screen to the other.

The problem with Rogue Trooper is that it has the wrong plot for this style of game. The slick big graphics cause the speed of movement to be restricted and that means it can't succeed as a high-action blast 'em game.

Conversely there isn't really enough in it to turn it into a 'find the objects and figure out what to do with them' affair.

I think most people will find it visually impressive, but slow, unexciting and all too easy.

Label: Piranha
Author: Design Design
Price: £9.95
Joystick: various
Memory: 48K/128K
Reviewer: Graham Taylor

***

MACHINE: Spectrum
SUPPLIER: Piranha
PRICE: £9.95

Welcome to Nu Earth, the war torn planet on the edge of the galaxy turned into a battle field by the Norts and Southers. Here they play out their never ending conflict.

This poisoned, cratered, devastated landscape is home to the Rogue Trooper, sole survivor of the Quartz Massacre. He saw an entire regiment of Genetic Infantry destroyed - betrayed by a top ranking office in the Souther's army.

Rogue's only mission in life is to find evidence which will lead to the trial of the man who sent his GI buddies to their doom in the Quartz Zone.

Each GI has his personality stored on bio-chip - and Rogue managed to rescue three of his buddies in chip form during the massacre. Bagman, Helm and Gunnar now accompany Rogue on his quest for justice, their synth-voices ringing out across the ruined planet as they help - and hinder - the Rogue Trooper's mission.

Nu Earth is where you'll find yourself once you've loaded in Piranha's latest offering - based, of course, on the cult character from the comic 2000AD.

Your mission is simple. You have to hunt for eight vid-tapes scattered across the surface of Nu Earth following the destruction of a Millicom satellite formerly in orbit around the planet. These tapes, in armoured cases, survived the blast and contain the evidence Rogue needs to convince his military bosses that the GIs were betrayed by a traitor.

Rogue has to explore the devastated planet - and avoid Nort troops and Southers who have no time for "deserters" like Rogue.

Te main screen display is taken up with a view of the current part of Nu Earth Rogue is exploring.

The graphics are pretty good - capturing the gritty style of the comic. They are line drawings in one coloour - the colour changes depending on the area of the planet Rogue is in. This obviously cuts down on any colour clash problems...

At the top of the screen you'll see Rogue's battle computer display which shows a small scale map of the planet - and the shuttle which is waiting to take our GI and his tapes back to civilisation.

At the top left hand side of the screen you'll see a window which contains the bio-chipped remains of Gunnar, Helm and Bagman. Messages from the chips appear here as you play.

As he tramps across the planet Rogue will come across boxes of ammo and med-kits which aid his survival in this hostile environment. Norts are always around, but if Rogue has enough firepower he can generally knock them out. If you want you can also take on the Nort pillboxes for more points.

Collect eight vid-tapes and Rogue must find his way back to the shuttle using the computer map as a guide.

But what about the playability, I hear you cry! Well, to put it bluntly, Rogue is a bit of a disappointment. The ideas are all there - but the game is just too easy to hold your attention for very long.

I completed the mission in just one sitting - which is almost unheard of here at C+VG. Not that it's not enjoyable to play. There's plenty of action to be had, the whole thing looks good, and it's easy to get into. But once you've completed the mission the only thing left to do is go back and do the whole thing all over again and simply try for a bigger score by shooting more Norts.

As I've already said, the graphics aren't bad but sound is minimal just a few bleeps and burps. Not a great game - but not totally naff either. Design Design have, and can, do better. But if your a fan of the comic and like games you can beat pretty easily then Rogue is worth looking at.

2000AD COMIC HERO, ROGUE TROOPER, BLASTS INTO ACTION.

Piranha
£7.95

You are Rogue Trooper a genetically engineered infantryman created to withstand the poisonous chem-clouds of Nu Earth. You are also the sole survivor of the Quartz massacre when your regiment was betrayed and wiped out by the Norts.

Now your only thought is to find the traitor responsible for the slaughter and revive our three buddies that are now mere bio-chips mounted on your gun, helmet and backpack.

These three chip buddies advise you during your mission as well as stir you on to more heroic deeds. Gunnar helps your firing but has a distinctly psychotic side to his nature and will constantly urge you to "blast some more Nort scum!" Helm gives you the odd hint and points you in general direction of medi kits and ammo stores and gets very excited when you find one of the eight vid tapes that will prove the identity of the traitor. Finally Bagman reports on current levels of ammo, kits and tapes and applies the medi kits if you're getting weak.

The war torn planet of Nu Earth is represented by 3D graphics illustrating the ruined cities, radiation deserts, graveyards, fuel dumps, nu forests and glass zones that are now swarming with Nort troops.

Rogue Trooper is controlled by joystick or redefinable keys and can explore the "real" landscape. This is obviously a development of Ultimate's original Knight Lore system tailor-made to the ruins, trees, graves and barbed wire of Nu Earth.

Charging around with guns blazing will only have short lived success as you will be quickly cut down by the Nort troopers, auto-firing pillboxes and mines that have a nasty habit of exploding if you get too close to them.

The way to success and a longer life is to use the scenery as cover, only rushing into the open when you can get first shot. Gunner might not like these tactics but you don't have to take all of the advice the chip buddies hurl at you.

My best so far is seven of the eight vid-tapes so the shuttle will have to wait a little longer before taking me to victory.

The Norts may have finally gunned me down but I took plenty of them with me. One thing's certain, I'll be back for more.